The federal No Child Left Behind Act provides for school accountability regarding the performance of individual student groups and the school as a whole. The student groups monitored by the Act are the various ethnic groups, students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, and students with limited English proficiency. Each group must meet a target performance goal known as Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP.

The results of the AYP performance of the Johnston County Schools for 2008 - 2009 have been released for most of the schools. Two schools, South Campus High School and Johnston County Early College Academy have yet to have their status determined because of the special nature of those schools. For the remaining 40 schools, 34 or 85% of the district's schools made AYP. This percentage is up from last year's 34.2%.

Dr. Ed Groom, Superintendent of Johnston County Schools stated, "We are very pleased with the progress our schools have made this year as measured by the No Child Left Behind program. The combined hard work of our students, parents, teachers, and administrators has contributed to this significant increase in performance of the district's schools. We are proud of this particular accomplishment as No Child Left Behind holds us accountable for all student subgroups. Our success illustrates our commitment to insure that every child learns at a high level."

Chief Academic Officer Keith Beamon noted that significant increases in Johnston's student performance in both the areas of math and reading contributed to the success of the school system. This year, retesting was allowed for students in Grades 3-8 who did not demonstrate proficiency on the first administration of the test. The retest contributed to the success of the schools, however according to Beamon, significant increases were experienced by most of the Johnston County Schools on the first administration of the tests as well.